Not all of Mrs. Gould’s jewelry is in this sale – some pieces were sold earlier, and others were stolen. Following a 1978 theft at her estate, involving $1.4 million worth of jewels, Mrs. Gould spoke lightly of the loss. “She used to say, ‚Thank heaven, they only got my everyday jewelry,‘ “

John Young, a director of the Florence J. Gould Foundation, said, adding that the most valuable pieces stolen were a three-strand necklace of 97 pearls, worth almost $700,000, and an 85-pearl chain.

The purpose of the foundation, which benefits from most of Mrs. Gould’s $100 million estate, is to foster French-American amity. Mrs. Gould, who was born in San Francisco and studied opera before she became Mr. Gould’s third wife in 1923, died without heirs.

The star among the 87 offerings in the sale is a sapphire necklace valued at as much as $1.5 million. The design began as a simple necklace devised by Van Cleef & Arpels, using a spectacular 114.30-carat sapphire, “The Blue Princess,‘‚ with diamonds.
Mrs. Gould subsequently made “The Blue Princess“ the center of an assemblage of sapphires and diamonds, a necklace that she styled and Georges Bidault, a jeweler with a workshop outside Paris, fabricated.

Second only in value to the sapphire is the “Victory“ diamond, 31.35 carats, mounted as a ring, which was named for the Allied victory in World War II because the rough stone from which it was cut was discovered in Sierre Leone in 1945 at the end of the war.
The rough stone was the third- largest ever found in Africa. The ring is estimated to sell for up to $700,000.

Mrs. Gould had a passion for pearls, and more than one superb necklace remains.
A pearl and diamond fringe necklace by Alexander Reza, a Paris jeweler on the Place Vendome is estimated to sell for up to $300,000.
“If we had five of them, we could sell them all, so strong is the interest,“ Francois Curiel, Christie’s jewelry specialist, said. Mr. Reza also fashioned for Mrs. Gould an emerald-bead necklace of carved fluted stones, the size of marbles, which is estimated to bring up to $220,000.

She wore diamonds from head to toe – as Mr. Curiel discovered when he checked her closets and found a pair of diamond clips on her shoes. She wore fakes too – there are three fake diamonds, two fake sapphires and an ersatz emerald in the sale. The fakes and the fish – there are numerous fish-shape pins, crafted of sapphires and diamonds, and of ivory, diamonds and emeralds – are, according to Christie’s, attracting the most interest among lower-price offerings in the sale.

On April 12, 1984 her jewelry was sold  for $8 million, the highest price then ever reached at auction for a single collection of jewelry.